A moment later, a dark-headed kid, who could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen, sauntered into the back room. His starkly corded body marked him as a gym rat. So far as Jack could see, there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He wasn’t muscle-bound like a lot of gym rats; rather, he’d sculpted his body to become a lean, mean, fighting machine. The normally laughable description that reminded Jack of a scene in the comedy Stripes was never more apt.
“We call him Grasi,” Slim said, “because he’s got some fuckin’ unpronounceable foreign name, don’t you, Grasi?”
Grasi grinned. He wore black jeans, custom high-tops, and an anachronistic leather vest over a white T-shirt that showed plenty of his chest. He had a ton of bling around his neck, and tattoos, most of them amateurish-looking. “Can’t buy a fucking vowel to save my life.”
Slim tossed him the octagonal badge. “You got a name for this?”
Grasi deftly caught it with his fingertips and held it up in front of his face. In almost the same motion, he tossed it back to Slim. His eyes slid sideways. “Never seen anything like it before.”
Slim sighed. “And there you have it, sports fans.” He shrugged as he handed the badge back to Jack, and said to Naomi, “I always try to be of service, but…” Again his shoulders lifted and fell.
“Thanks, anyway,” Naomi said. “It was worth a shot.”
Grasi turned to go.
“Hold on a minute,” Jack said. “Can you show me where the bathroom is?”
Grasi nodded disinterestedly, and Jack followed him out into the shop proper.
* * *
PETER MCKINSEY stood with shoulders hunched, hands thrust deep into pockets containing any number of concealed folding weapons whose honed steel both energized and soothed him. He was oblivious to the light rain or the passing vehicles. With chin jutting and lips pursed, he was sunk deep inside his thoughts.
He had met Willowicz six months into his tour of duty in the Horn of Africa. Willowicz’s name was different then, but the man was the same. McKinsey and Willowicz felt an immediate kinship, possibly because they held the same worldview. Their intense and uncompromising gung-ho attitude was nothing more than a facade beneath which existed a rich layer of nihilism. The interesting thing was that neither was conscious of this Nietzschean tendency; they would have vociferously denied it, even if confronted with the truth.
They were fearless, which meant that they were reckless in everything they did, skating along the edge of the black ice of death without ever succumbing to its embrace. They killed, maimed, tortured, and slaughtered the intractable enemy with the righteous zeal of Crusaders or priests of the Spanish Inquisition. They liked to invoke God’s name while they laughed, splashing in blood and gore, grinding guts and organs to the consistency of motor oil. Spurred on by the seemingly limitless enmity they encountered every minute of every day and night, there was nothing they wouldn’t do to their enemy to make him give up secrets out of the agony they inflicted, never thinking for a moment that these secrets might be concocted in order to end the pain. But no matter how many of the enemy they destroyed, the full measure of the satisfaction they craved never materialized. No matter how hard they tried, no matter how much pain they inflicted, they could never engender in their prey the terror they longed to see. These people were different, inhabiting an entirely different plane of existence than the Americans.
“They’re not human,” they would tell each other, over the stink of their high-minded work or, later, during bouts of heavy drinking. “If they can’t feel terror, they can’t feel any emotion. They’re for sure not human.” If it wasn’t satisfaction, it was impossible, during those sessions, to know what emotions McKinsey and Willowicz felt.
That was then. Today they were back home, in different jobs, but with precisely the same mind-set. The trouble was, neither of them could leave behind their time in the Horn of Africa. Like a malarial fever, their exploits rose into their consciousness, regular as an ocean tide, dragging with it a swath of man-made sludge: cracked skulls, congealed blood, fractured bones, and bits of gray matter. It was not enough; nothing was enough. And so the two of them existed like creatures of the dark, bloodthirsty, vampiric, unwilling or unable to readjust to a civilization hamstrung by laws that entangled the forward thrust of their urgent missions.
He didn’t like being left out of whatever was happening back inside Slim’s crap-joint, but he recognized he only had himself to blame. Seeing these people lounging around with .45s in their belts infuriated him. If he had his way, he’d fire-bomb every one of them. Fuck civil rights. People like Slim didn’t deserve to hide behind the laws that were meant to put them in the slammer. He belonged facedown in the gutter. Not for the first time, McKinsey wished he were back in the Horn of Africa.
“I dream about that place,” he’d said to Willowicz as they’d sat in the gray late-model Ford. There was no need to be more specific, they spoke in the shorthand of war when they were together.
“Every night,” Willowicz said. “But sometimes I think it’s a place I made up.”
McKinsey stared out the window at the grayness. “What are we doing here?”
“Our jobs,” Willowicz said. “Like always.”
McKinsey nodded, but with the air of a person staring at something he could see with no real clarity.
“Everything was clear-cut over there,” Willowicz said, as if reading his friend’s mood. “Here, nothing makes sense.”
“We did what we wanted, what was needed. Now what? We put one foot in front of the other. Like old men whose lives are behind them.”
“We’re in a goddamn fog of unknowing.”
McKinsey let out a long breath. “McClure changed ME’s on us. The new one, Egon Schiltz, isn’t on our payroll.”
“Then we’ll put him on it.”
“Sadly, no.” McKinsey sounded disgusted. “Schiltz is a personal friend of McClure’s. He won’t bite and, what’s worse, he’s sure to inform his pal of the approach.”
Willowicz shifted in his seat. “Then I’ll kill the fucker.”
“Good idea. That for sure won’t alert McClure.”
Willowicz drew his neck in like a turtle. “Or we can do nothing. Like toothless old men.”
A short, poisonous silence ensued.
“Fuck it!” McKinsey kicked open the door and launched himself out.
Leaning over, Willowicz said, “Be careful of that dirtbag McClure.”
McKinsey made a gun with his thumb and forefinger and started down the ramp.
Now, with the rain in his face, he shook out a cigarette and lit up. Smoke drifted past his eyes, obscuring a world he despised, a world in which he did not belong.
* * *
GRASI POINTED out the grubby door of the toilet and started off toward the front of the shop.
“Hey,” Jack said, “what’s your real name?”
The teenager turned back. “Everyone calls me Grasi.”
“Even at home? Even your mother?”
“I have no mother.” Grasi said this matter-of-factly, without a hint of remorse or self-pity.
Jack came toward him. “‘Grasi’ is a Romanian word. It means fat. You aren’t fat.”
“It’s a fucking joke, man.”
“You Romanian, Grasi?”
The youth stuck out his jaw. “What the fuck of it?”
Jack shrugged, even as he lunged forward, grabbed hold of the bling around Grasi’s neck, and yanked it off.
“Little fuck-nuts!” With a soft snik! a switchblade appeared in Grasi’s fist.
As he advanced, Jack threw the bling back to him. All except one piece: a gold pendant in the shape of an octagon. Jack had noticed it when Grasi was supposedly studying the badge. When he spoke, Jack knew he was lying.
Jack held the pendant and the badge side by side. “They’re identical,” he said.
Grasi flicked the tip of the wicked-looking blade.
“You’re smarter than that,” Jack said. “I�
�m not your enemy.”
Grasi laughed. “Fuck you, you’re not my friend.”
“That depends.” Jack kept his eye on the tip of the blade. “I’m the only one who can keep you out of jail now.”
“I ain’t done nothing, fuck-nuts.”
Jack held up the pendant and the badge. “These say you’re lying. We’re investigating three very nasty homicides. This badge is our only clue. D’you get it? You know something I need to know. If you hold out on me, I’m going to throw your ass in jail for suspicion of murder and obstructing a federal homicide investigation. Believe me, you won’t like it in federal lockup. The inmates there eat your kind for breakfast.”
For a moment, Grasi looked around, his eyes rolling madly. Then he licked his lips and flicked the switchblade closed. “Thatë. My name is Thatë.”
* * *
WITH THE iron poker’s fall, Alli felt a scream bubbling up into her throat. She forced it aside, converting it into a shout of defiance, as she ducked behind the wingback chair. The poker slammed into the padded top, splitting the fabric, flaying off stuffing, as it would have Alli’s skin and flesh.
Rudy, expecting her to make for the door, backed up to stand squarely in her path. But Alli had no intention of heading for the door, at least not yet. She lunged toward the fireplace and grabbed the ash shovel, which was unwieldy but with its wide head approached the defensive-offensive combination of a medieval mace.
Rudy, seeing her struggle with the shovel, laughed.
Good deal, Alli thought. In situations like this her diminutive size was a tremendous advantage. Because she still carried the appearance of a young girl, she was treated as such. She waited, showing Rudy how difficult it must be for her to hold the shovel for any length of time, let alone swing it as a weapon.
“You’re dead, you know that,” Rudy said as he came at her, poker held high.
Alli didn’t bother to answer. Instead, she watched the weapon, its increasing arc, as Rudy, massive shoulder bunched, drew it back and swung it at her.
The poker made a whistling sound, like a bird in flight, or an arrow. She waited for the last minute, as Jack had always instructed her, then brought the broad shovel head into the path of the arc. A hard ringing, like a struck bell, and sparks flew. She staggered beneath the power of Rudy’s blow, more than was necessary to steady herself.
Rudy, a fierce grin plastered across his face, moved in, cutting off her line of retreat, backing her up against the fireplace.
“There’s a fine spot for them to find you.” His rising excitement turned his voice guttural. “Curled in the fireplace with the soot and the ash.”
“When people talk, their attention wavers,” Jack had told her, and, as usual, he was right. Even as Rudy was mocking her, she lowered the shovel as if it had become too heavy for her, and swung it hard into the side of his left knee.
He groaned as the joint crumpled and he lost his footing. The poker fell to the floor as he grabbed his knee in agony. Alli tossed aside the shovel and ran. As she passed him, she kicked him in the side of the head. Then she leapt over him and, sprinting across the study, threw open the door, and raced out into the hallway.
Behind her, she could hear Rudy cursing, climbing noisily to his feet, then shouting to his fellow guards, alerting them to her escape. One of them appeared in the hallway ahead of her. He drew his sidearm and she backed up, turned, and heading back, raced around a corner, taking the first branching that presented itself.
She knew the layout of her uncle’s house well, though she hadn’t been in it for years. Now she headed for the kitchen, which had both a back door and a large larder with a trapdoor down to the root cellar, which Uncle Hank had converted into a temperature-controlled wine cellar.
She could hear the heavy tramp of thick brogues pounding behind her, and Rudy’s voice bellowing like that of a maddened bull. By her count, there were three guards. She knew, more or less, where two of them were, but where was the third?
She got her answer a moment later, as he stepped out of a shadow and slammed her in the back just before she reached the kitchen. He drove her into the bathroom from which he had just exited. Arms pinwheeling, her lungs gasping to pull in air, her foot skidded on the floor mat and she slid into the gleaming porcelain wall of the bathtub. Her left arm broke the plane of the plastic shower curtain, and she pulled it down around the guard as he reached over to grab her. Driving her body upward, she sought to entangle him in the stiff folds. She smacked away his grasping fingers. She could see his features twisted and distorted with effort through the translucent curtain, and when she slammed the heel of her hand into his nose a bright red rose of blood bloomed on the plastic, obscuring his expression. But she could feel the growing dismay and, possibly, panic in the frenzied movement of his limbs, the uncoordinated shaking of his head like a wolf in a trap. She popped him one more time on the bridge of his nose and he lay still.
She turned, pushed the body off her, and stood, slamming the door shut. There was a pounding in her head and she felt her gorge rising. The taste of stomach acid burned her throat. She shivered as she put her ear to the door, waiting for the sound of brogues to resume, but instead she heard whispers and recognized Rudy’s voice. Intuition told her what they were talking about. She could not use the little-girl act on Rudy again, and now was certain she couldn’t use it on the other guard, either. Bending down, she drew the unconscious guard’s .38 from its holster.
“Conlon!” Rudy called. “Conlon, are you okay?”
The cool heft of the handgun in her fist felt good, her forefinger lying beside the trigger like a cobra ready to spit its poison. There was an intoxication that came from holding a loaded gun, a sense of power that seemed to flow from the weapon into her hand, racing up her arm and into her brain. And it was this disorienting, larger-than-life feeling that caused her to remember what Jack had told her. “I’d rather face an adversary with a gun than one with a knife,” he’d cautioned her. “Guns make you overconfident, they make you feel as if you can overpower any adversary, and that’s where the real danger to you raises its head.”
The problem was simple enough: She was in a cul-de-sac with no other egress but the one door; there was no window in this interior bathroom. This was why Rudy and his partner hadn’t stormed in. They didn’t know the situation in here, other than the fact that Conlon had been neutralized. But that also meant she was now armed, so they were waiting for her to emerge, at which time they would grab her and disarm her before she had a chance to shoot either one of them.
A shootout would only get her killed or wounded, so she couldn’t risk even poking her head out the door to assess the situation. She had to make do with whatever was available in the bathroom.
Her hands were shaking, her heartbeat elevated, her breathing erratic. Turning to the medicine cabinet over the sink, she scanned the shelves. She’d heard about spray cans, any of which she could have put into service now, but nowadays only pump sprays were available, and were of no use. But, scrounging around in the cabinet under the sink, she found a bottle of drain cleaner. Judging by its weight, it was at least half full. Her fear was palpable, a bitter, metallic taste in her mouth. She sought to tame it, because eradicating it was a waste of time.
Several deep breaths later, she jammed the bottle into the waistband of her jeans at the small of her back, and turned her attention back to Conlon. He was still unconscious. Watching him softly breathe, an idea occurred to her. It might be crazy, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of a better alternative.
Temporarily sticking the .38 into her left front pocket, she bent and, grunting, lifted Conlon in his sticky cocoon onto his feet. It seemed a long, laborious project, but at last she had him on his feet, propped against the wall beside the door. She took a moment only to regain her breath, then, yanking open the door, she pushed him into the hall.
A moment later all hell broke loose.
Someone grabbed for Conlon as he fell into the hallw
ay. In a blur of motion, she tossed the contents of the bottle of drain cleaner all over the front of the suit’s shirt. He immediately recoiled, shouting in shock and pain, Conlon’s insensate body toppled to the floor, and that was all the time she got. She tore herself away from other hands clawing at her from behind.
Vaulting over the fallen men, she ran toward the open doorway to the kitchen, but as soon as she got there she was forced to jump over the body of the cook or the gardener—one of Uncle Hank’s staff, anyway—which lay crumpled just beyond the doorway. With no time to find out if the man was dead or alive, Alli made for the back door. After being trapped in the bathroom, she had no desire to trap herself again down in the wine cellar.
She reached the glass-and-wood door more or less at the same time as her pursuer. She felt his powerful hand on her shoulder, pulling her backward, and, drawing the acquired .38, she whipped the barrel at his face. She heard a satisfying crunch of bone fracturing, and, released, she whipped the door open and fled outside.
It was raining, and she skidded badly on the slick flagstone surface leading to the gardens that comprised the inner circle of property at the rear of the house. She heard his breath first, then felt him on top of her as she struggled to regain her footing.
“Got you now, you little bitch,” Rudy said.
NINE
JACK MOVED the young man deeper into the rear of the shop to make certain no one overheard them.
“Go on,” he urged.
“Underground,” Thatë said.
“How far underground?” Jack asked.
“Not far enough … now.” Thatë made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat.
Jack saw that McKinsey had turned around and, staring through the front window, was watching him and Thatë talk. He wondered if McKinsey could lip-read. Turning his head away, he said to Thatë, “I want you to move into a section of the store where we can’t be seen from the street.”
Thatë did as Jack asked, and Jack soon followed him.
“I don’t like those two,” Thatë said, clearly referring to McKinsey and Naomi.
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